Impact HR Blog

KEEPING UP TO DATE

Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em

14 Feb 17

Unfortunately, there’s no one way that always works. Every business is different. During my 20+ years in HR, I’ve studied, implemented, revised and learnt different techniques that worked in individual businesses and probably wouldn’t have worked as well in others.

Employee Motivation

However, the wonderful thing about improving employee retention is that it doesn’t have to be hard or cost the earth. Below are nine initiatives, none of them secret or expensive, that have worked for businesses that I’ve supported:

  • Be clear on the mission, vision and values of your business. When you can talk about them clearly, your passion becomes infectious and creates loyal, dedicated team members.
  • Regularly recognise members of your team who demonstrate the values of your company and do it in front of others. When you do this, others will act in the same way.
  • Celebrate successes (even little ones) collectively on a daily or weekly basis.
  • Regular one-on-one or small team meetings. If you are already doing one-on-ones, really take advantage of the coaching and mentoring opportunity this gives you.
  • Create opportunities for your team to build relationships with each other. It doesn’t have to be big or complex. Simple but effect examples include celebrating birthdays or start dates, hot crossed buns at Easter or maybe moon cakes for Chinese New Year. Be creative and find things that work for your team.
  • When you are genuine about helping others work towards their career and personal objectives, you will find they are loyal and will want to help you achieve yours too.
  • Give honest feedback to your team. No one is perfect so provide feedback in a way that is respectful but helps them understand what they are doing well and what needs to improve.
  • Remember that it is not ALL business. Make sure you do the little personal things: say good morning to people, ask how people are going, recognise birthdays and dates that people joined the team. Make sure they know you realise they are more than a robot.
  • Give them flexibility when they need it. Guaranteeing flexible work conditions to your employees will help their satisfaction and your peace of mind – as recently confirmed by Alsco.
  • Use your contacts to help connect your team to others wherever possible. Sometimes you’ll see that these connections will professionally benefit the business as well. Occasionally it will be just a personal benefit for the team member. However, I can guarantee it will still benefit your business in the long term.

So, now you will be able to spend more time on the business and less time recruiting new people… Unless of course your employee retention leads to greater customer satisfaction and they spend more as a result and then you need to grow your business to keep up with demand. In that case, you will be recruiting for positive reasons. Happy days!

Team

If you would like to talk about employee retention programs that will work for you, feel free to contact Impact HR Sydney at info@impacthr.com.au or call us on 02 9907 6837 for a no-obligation discussion.

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